Exhibit Explores The Appeal Of King Arthur

December 15, 1991|By Nancy Pate, Sentinel Book Critic

NEW YORK — Legend has it that one day King Arthur will return. When he does, he'll discover his fame has endured the years and traveled the world, inspiring novelists, poets, composers, artists and filmmakers.

Historians still debate as to whether there ever was a real King Arthur, and archeologists continue to dig up parts of Wales and southwest England in search of his legendary realm, Camelot. Some evidence now suggests that Arthur might have been a 5th-century Celtic chieftain when Britain was struggling against Germanic invaders. As for Camelot, a hill fort in Somerset known as Cadbury Castle has been proposed as the original site.

For the next two months, however, fans of the fabled King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, of his wife Guinevere, of the great knight Lancelot and of the magician Merlin, can find a little bit of Camelot in the middle of Manhattan. A new exhibition at the New York Public Library, ''King Arthur: Looking at the Legend,'' explores the appeal of Arthurian legend and lore.

''The truth is that the 'real' Arthur is the Arthur of legend,'' says Ruth Hamilton, a medieval scholar and exhibit curator. ''This is the Arthur who has been celebrated for nearly 1,500 years.''

The exhibit, which features 184 books, manuscripts, prints and other items, is appropriately housed in the library's Gottesman Hall, a vast, dimly lit chamber with a high, carved wooden ceiling and marble columns and floor. The stark outline of a castle is projected on one wall, and storyboards tracing the tales of King Arthur hang like tapestries.

Those tales date back to 6th-century Wales, to ancient poems and to the romance Kilhwch and Olwen, in which Arthur appears with the knights Kay, Bedivere and Gawain. By the 12th century, Arthur's fame was widespread and he attained stature as a hero-king in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. ''The fame of his bounty and prowess was upon every man's tongue,'' the medieval monk wrote, ''even to the uttermost ends of the earth.''

Certainly Arthur was a popular figure not only in England but also in Germany, where he became the center of many legends recounting the marvelous deeds of his knights, and in France, where poet Chretien de Troyes included the story of Lancelot and that of Cornwall's star-crossed lovers Tristan and Isolde in his Arthurian romances. As time went on, and the stories evolved, the legend of Arthur became further embellished.

In the 15th century, Sir Thomas Malory gathered together much of the Arthurian material and condensed and retold it in his prose classic Le Morte d'Arthur, one of the works chosen for publication in 1485 by William Caxton, the first English printer. It was Malory who wove together the now familiar elements of Merlin's magic and Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon; of the love between Lancelot and Guinevere; young Arthur's pulling of the sword from the stone; the founding of the Round Table and its members' chivalrous deeds; the quest for the Holy Grail; the great battle between Arthur and his bastard son, Mordred; the return of Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake; and Arthur's final voyage to Avalon.

Malory's work has been the wellspring for numerous other writers, from Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Idylls of the King) to Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), from Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queen) to T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land).

T.H. White's novel The Once and Future King has been especially influential. Although he relied on Malory for the novel's outline, his fresh and dramatic retelling of the legend, coupled with the humanity of his characters, won him both critical and popular approval. The book is divided into four parts, and the first, The Sword in the Stone, recounting Arthur's boyhood, was first published in 1938. It later was adapted into the animated Disney film of the same name. The Once and Future King was published in its entirety in 1958 and became the basis for the popular Broadway musical Camelot, which also was made into a movie.

Other 20th-century novelists who have won acclaim for their Arthurian works include C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength), Rosemary Sutcliffe (Sword at Sunset), Thomas Berger (Arthur Rex) and Mary Stewart (The Crystal Cave).

The exhibit displays editions of all these works, plus many others. A number of them include illustrations by such well-known artists as Gustave Dore, Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, N.C. Wyeth and Walter Crane.

Also on display are items illustrating Arthurian legend's hold on the performing arts: theatrical programs and playbills, music scores and set designs. An 1842 playbill from the Theatre Royal in London's Drury Lane, for example, announces the performance of a King Arthur opera. Lobby cards advertise the 1967 film Camelot.

Other aspects of popular culture are by no means exempt from Arthur's influence. Witness the comic strips, the cartoons, the King Arthur playing cards and coffee mugs.

At the end of White's The Once and Future King, on the eve of Arthur's last great battle with Mordred's forces, the king asks a young page named Thomas not to fight but instead to take a fast horse and leave for home. Someone, Arthur says, must be left to tell the story of the Round Table:

''Thomas, my idea of those knights was a sort of candle, like these ones here. I have carried it for many years with a hand to shield it from the wind. It has flickered often. I am giving you the candle now - you won't let it out?''